Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1883 — Was Man Descended from a Bear? [ARTICLE]

Was Man Descended from a Bear?

In a cave near Morrison, Col., I found a number of bones that look to me like those of a human creature that may have been half bear and half man. But there may be b jars’bones and men’s bones in the same cave. I am convinced that these are among the most wonderful discoveries ever made by a zoologist or anatomist. We found bones of shell fish and many crinoids imbedded in rocks. The undisturbed remains of creatures that have lived and died a natural death are beside the bones of creatures that must have served the cave-dwellers for food. It has been held for a long time by geologists that man must have been a contemporary of the cave bear. I hope to establish the truth of my idea that he may have been something more than a contemporary—let us say a descendant. The strata below those in which, the first bones were found have not yet been disturbed. But I see many things to convince me that the cave had been inhabited by long generations of bears and men When the western basin, of which the Morrison soda lakes formed a part, became a great inland sea, bears and men, or the pre-historic creatures that then stood in the place of men, fled to the caves for protection. The roof of the cave in which we are working is between twenty and thirty-feet high. Men and bears came to live and die in this under world. They came to huge bowlders at the mouth of the cave, and, stepping upon them, were somewhat above the water, and could get breaths of fresh air. I believe that this cave may be but a series of eaves,’ and that if these could be uncovered and explored we should have chambers and underground lakes and rivers that would surpass those in the Mammoth cave of Kentucky.— Prof. F. G. Gherke, in Denver News.